Life Lessons

The loss of a parent. It’s a big one. It’s the one we all tend to lock away in the back of our minds, wanting to avoid yet knowing in our hearts will be our collective reality one day.

I cared for and lost a parent earlier than most. I was 16 when my Mum had the catastrophic car accident that would change my life and many others forever. That’s the thing about car accidents, they have lifelong consequences that most people will never truly understand. It was one day, a moment in time, light rain and the only witness was the one whose life was so very nearly taken.

This post (the first in way too long) is as much for myself as my treasured readers! It has been another period of deep introspection, unexpected anxiety, the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. As those who know me well will recognise, such is the ebb and flow of a life lived with depth, pain and always open to growth.

Some days are harder than others on the heart, the soul and the resilience levels. Below are some of the ways that I attempt to seek the sunshine when the darkness threatens to steal my joy.

It was 18 years ago this week that my fragile, broken 48 year old Mother was no longer able to fight the cancer that had slowly destroyed her body for 6 years. She died in Gosford Hospital in the early hours of the morning on the 15th of January 2000. 18 years … sounds like a long time. Most days it does actually feel like another lifetime, an alternate universe, surreal and disconnected from the life I have rebuilt since that day. Other times I can easily recall the smells and sights, touching her forehead moments after she had died, spending time on my own in her room gathering her things in the hours after she left us.